A new research report from Strategy Analytics – New Frontiers: 10 Trends that will shape the Wireless Enterprise in 2011 – has predicated that organizations will experience “seismic” changes to their mobile communications and data delivery systems/platforms in 2011, as mobile enterprise applications become an essential element of day-to-day IT operations, permanently altering business operations.

Andrew Brown, Strategy Analytic’s Director of Wireless Enterprise Strategies, said that the use of smartphones and tablets in the enterprise was in the midst of changing from an “experiment to an enterprise norm”.

Strategy Analytic’s assessment of the delivery and management of enterprise mobile communications is echoed by Business Intelligence (BI) researcher, and Mobile BI expert, Howard Dresner, in his updated Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study.

The benchmark report confirmed recent industry research, suggesting that the Mobile BI market is growing rapidly, as businesses across all industries realize the potential benefits.

Dresner, former Gartner Research Fellow and President and Founder of Dresner Advisory Services, said at the official launch of the report in an InformationWeekwebcast on February 17, that BI usage was in the midst of a fundamental and permanent paradigm shift in favor of Mobile BI.

Perceived importance of Mobile BI high: Mobile BI usage set to rise

The Dresner study revealed that the level of interest in Mobile BI remains stable from the last report in June, indicating that the industry is in the midst of a permanent shift, not merely a fad. As further evidence of this trend, only four percent of survey respondents said that Mobile BI was “Not Important”.

The report revealed that 11 percent of respondent organizations provide access to Mobile BI to over 40 percent of their workforce. The report indicated that this figure is set to rise sharply. Within 12 months, 18 percent of organizations said that over 40 percent of their workforce will have access to Mobile BI, with around 33 percent expecting to deliver Mobile BI to over 40 percent of their workforce within 24 months.

Many users set to receive access to BI exclusively via mobile devices

The report noted that one of the biggest shifts encountered in the 2011 version of the study was the increase in the number of BI users who were set to become exclusively mobile consumers of reporting and analytics within the next 24 months.

Respondents across the board said that they planned to increase the number of personnel with access to Mobile BI, and reflective of the transition to enterprise mobility, 97 percent of respondents said that 25 percent or more users would receive analytics exclusively on a mobile device by 2013.

“Only three percent [of survey respondents] said they’re not going to have any [users using Mobile BI exclusively],” said Dresner. “Seventy percent of respondents said [that] 25 percent [of their current BI users would be exclusively mobile users within 24 months]. 23 percent said that half of their Business Intelligence users would be exclusively mobile [within 24 months].”

Dresner concluded the webcast by saying that the rapidly growing uptake and interest in Mobile BI meant that in the future, it would not simply represent a growing facet of BI, but would become the main form of deliver for business analytics and the focal point of the entire industry.

Conclusion

It turns out that 2011 is not only the year of the rabbit, but also the year of enterprise mobility.